Speaker
Description
A large area (560 m2) muon telescope has been operating in Ooty, Tamil Nadu, as a part of the GRAPES-3 experiment since 2000. The construction of a similar area muon telescope is in progress. The existing muon telescope consists of nearly 4000 proportional counters (PRCs), and a similar number of PRCs have been deployed in the new muon telescope. The signal produced by the PRCs due to the passage of muons is only a few mV which needs to be amplified and discriminated appropriately before further processing. Due to the tiny signal (~100 pC charge), noise is an important issue affecting the recorded data quality. The PRCs in the existing muon telescope were instrumented with amplifier-discriminators designed and used for more than four decades since the Kolar Gold Field experiments. However, an effort was undertaken to design and develop these electronics in-house using the latest technologies and considering various aspects to suppress the noise and reduce power consumption. It has been successfully developed, fabricated in large numbers, and implemented in the existing muon telescope by replacing the old frontend electronics. The quality of the recorded data has been significantly improved after the upgrade. We will discuss the challenges in developing and producing the frontend electronics in large numbers and their superior performances compared to the old electronics.
| Session | Future Experiments and Detector Development |
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